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My recent essay‘s size constraints didn’t permit me to elaborate on this but I do have a nuanced view of the jury system theory. I see it as a Christian revelation-influenced move away from private vendetta parties and mob violence. I recognize the English law system’s principles of habeas corpus, presumption of innocence, etc as Christian revelation-influenced protections of the individual person against the collective that are very good.

However, in practice, the jury system still functions within a kind of already, not yet space. Already leavened by Christian personhood-affirming structures of law but not yet completely shed of its sacrificial origins in archaic religion. Nonviolent persons I define as people charged with crimes without victims, meaning when the police wrote the report they put the “People of the State of ___” because there really is no injured party to redress grievances. I argue that for a community to send deadly agents to enforce a victimless crime law, no matter what it is, is an act of scapegoating. I believe the scapegoat mechanism is continued in the act of putting said person in a cage with actual violent persons in which assault is commonplace and escape is impossible. The scapegoat mechanism begins with the performative lie of the collective’s agents being sent with the option of deadly force to confront something that no sane person would have moral right to use deadly force as an individual: broken tail lights, late child support payments, drug possession, consensual adult prostitution, unlicensed hair salon, etc, etc. The lie is performed by the community by their treatment of the person as if they are violent when in fact they are not. The idea of placing someone in a cage is a performative lie (embodied communication and false witness through collective action). The person is cast outside the camp, other-ized, counted among the violent and dangerous, and dehumanized. – David Gornoski

Because he refuses to hide the knife of the state, Trump is a heretic invader in the Holy of holies of our state religion. That also makes him the scapegoat supreme of our reigning religion of state power which feigns decorum and transcendence to mask the vulgarity and power lust inherent in every state action.

Whenever you stand in between an outraged mob looking to demonize and destroy a singular target with righteous zeal, you will always be accused of being in league with their devil. Your space outside of the oneness they experience together in rage gives them eyes to see you as a potential enemy as well.

What do you mean “don’t scapegoat him?” Don’t you know he did X, Y, and Z? Do YOU support X, Y, Z?

Well no, I don’t think I do. But given the right circumstance and power, maybe I would. And maybe you would too. And so casting him out won’t solve our problems. Only the recognition that we all are prone to violently scapegoat others will begin the process of repentance so that our guilty pleasure structures built on shame shifting no longer hold such esteem in our hearts.

http://aneighborschoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/happy-friends-together-m.jpg10891835davidhttp://aneighborschoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/logo.pngdavid2017-10-02 20:08:492017-10-02 20:08:49Standing Between a Mob and its Victim

Once you allow the collective to use violence against a single nonviolent act like opium use, you open the moral authority for them to use violence to punish other nonviolent acts…like speech they deem hateful, wages they deem too low, milk that is not pasteurized, lack of health insurance, etc. The moral principle of Jesus-imitating nonviolence must be consistently applied lest we enter the chaos of democracies that scapegoat misfits and dissenters based on the latest whims of the crowd.

My argument for Christian based law system is two step:
1. Only moral use for prison is violent theft, fraud, child abuse (includes selling minors drugs btw), assault, rape, murder or attempts thereof. All other acts are nonviolent and should be dealt with a whole of host of nonviolent and creative social solutions and actions.
2. In an ideal world that goes beyond the scope of our current prison system, we would make petty theft (involving no violent threats, weapons, or systematic fraud on a grand scale) restitution based where victims can have the choice to work out a mercy repayment system over jail time and criminal records.
Also, for violent crimes like rape and murder, we’d clean up the prison system model to not be so dehumanizing and permissive of prison violence.

This two step model can be accomplished with a limited, low tax local government based model in the near term. And in a long view, accomplished even more effectively in a private property based law system wherein communities set voluntary contracts as offerings to would be members looking to live there with terms, conditions, and city wide associations and/or insurance firms providing subscription style models for security from theft and violence and justice meditations and facilities or spaces for violent persons to be placed.

A voluntary covenant-based community can set rules for excommunication from the property if you attempt murder. Since surrounding private property-based communities would not want random murderers cast into their communities, there would be agreements between said communities to guarantee safety from marauding murderers. A network of these agreements would develop so that the portions of land such persons would be able to inhabit would be islands or walled off tracts of land cooperatively owned by communities and voluntarily funded to protect society from psychopaths.

http://aneighborschoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/freedom-1125539_1920.jpg12801920davidhttp://aneighborschoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/logo.pngdavid2017-09-29 15:24:162017-09-29 15:24:16A two step vision for Christian-based law